Back to World War II: The Invaders

During his long career as a writer with both Marvel and DC, Roy Thomas had a number of opportunities to indulge in his love of Golden-Age characters--characters he loved as a kid.

This can be dangerous, since even good writers can go astray when they become pros and begin writing for characters they loved as a kid. Nostalgia can cloud over their talent and the results can be awkward.

But Thomas never allowed this to happen. Both with Marvel's The Invaders, which he began writing in 1975, and DC's All-Star Squadron from a few years later, his skills at charactization and plot structure allowed him to play in the Golden Age sandbox while still producing excellent tales.

Both series were retcons of sorts, bringing World War II-era superheroes into new groups. But at the same time, he kept nearly everything he wrote within the bounds of Golden Age continuity.

This week, we'll look at the first appearance of the Invaders. In the mid-1970s, Marvel was often publishing Giant Size issues--pretty much the same as the annuals that Marvel had been producing for many of their titles, but with a cooler name. So the Invaders premiered in Giant-Size Invaders #1 (June 1975), with Frank Robbins providing the art for Thomas' story.

Robbins got his start in comic strips, most notably drawing an adventure strip titled Johnny Hazard from the strip's inception in 1944 until it ended in 1977.  His work on this strip is excellent--Robbins is a fine artist whose career is one in which he could take pride.

But I admit I never really cared for his comic book work with Marvel in the mid-1970s; neither on The Invaders nor on Captain America & The Falcon. To steal a sentence from someone in Facebook's Comic Book Historians group: "But, seriously, it's all about styles, and Robbins was never suited for super-hero work." 

On the other hand, a fan of his work posted:  I must admit I despised Robbins' work at the time, (as a 10 year-old Kirby, Kane and Buscema fan) and hated his Invaders art. But today I love it and it makes total sense in context. I do still think that, as an aesthetic choice, it seemed a little out of place in the contemporary Cap strip, but it entirely suited the 1940s stories. It's beautiful stuff.

Take a look at the above double panel, in which Cap and Bucky are taking down some Nazi saboteurs not long after Pearl Harbor was bombed.  One person in the Comic Book Historians group declared it to be one of his favorite images ever. For me, while I love the overall composition, Cap and Bucky seem awkwardly posed, as if they are doing badly-timed ballet moves rather than taking down Nazis.

But if you accept Robbins' art for what it is or like him as a superhero artist more than I do, then the story is great. We soon learn that the Nazis have a plan to try to recreate the Super-Soldier formula that made Cap, then use the resultant "Master Man" to carry out a particularly important act of sabotage.

As the story progresses, Cap and Bucky team up with the Human Torch and Toro, then later run into Namor. But Master Man is powerful enough to take them all on while attacking a British warship. Fortunately, the Nazi version of the Super Soldier formula is flawed and Master Man reverts to a puny guy before he can complete his mission.

Namor then ensures that a nearby U-boat also fails to complete the mission. And what was that mission exactly? Winston Churchill was aboard the ship, coming to the U.S. to make war plans with F.D.R. Churchill suggests they form a team---a sort-of pre-D-Day invaders. And not even Namor is going to turn Winston Churchill down.

The story is very well-constructed, with the various heroes meeting each other at logical points in the story and the action scenes are imaginative and an integral part of the overall tale.

But I'll never be a huge fan of Robbins' superhero poses. But at least I don't hate him as much as my brother does. When I told him I would be reviewing this issue on my blog, he (who has been training his children since birth to be old-school Marvel fans) emailed me this:

Frank Robbins ruined not just my childhood. but [my son] Josiah's as well.  Not just the Invaders title, but most notably, the Cap and Falcon Nomad story line.  I've never really recovered from that and nobody understands my pain. Tell the world of my pain. 

Next week, we'll pay another visit with Tragg and the Sky Gods. In two weeks, we'll look at Roy Thomas' visit to World War II via the DC Universe.